


fold yourself in two

by sandandsalt



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandandsalt/pseuds/sandandsalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s running out of hiding spots, burial grounds. Post 2x06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fold yourself in two

She has been in this hospital for hours or days (she no longer knows the difference). They all went – what else was there to do? – arranged themselves like in the newsroom, too close in chairs too small, forced claustrophobia. Lix has spent the past hour lighting cigarettes, smoking long drags and then passing them around the circle. Bel’s knees are bent up against hers and she takes the girl’s hand, presses the cigarette to her lips.

“Breathe, darling, it’s –” _going to be okay_ , is what she wants to say. The words slide back down her throat in one unsteady gulp. (The last time she thought a child was safe, the last time she told herself, swore that she was safe – Lix can’t do it, not tonight.) She presses her palm against Bel’s hand, speaks in smoke signals instead of words.

Marnie is asleep on Hector’s shoulder and Hector is not quite meeting anyone’s eyes. Lix wishes she had a bottle, maybe an ocean, of whiskey. The seat next to her is empty. Randall has been patrolling the hallways, reorganized every bulletin board on the floor, she’s sure. When he passed by them last time, steps like a ghost, he had been muttering the names of charitable donors under his breath.

The ceiling is too high and Bel’s hands are too cold and they’re all tight-lipped, breathing out silences. Peter Harrington, Monica Newsom, she can hear Randall turning the corner.

Lix suddenly feels as though she’s about to cry.

“I left something in the office,” is what comes out of her mouth.

Randall says he’ll come with her. A fumbled explanation of how none of them should be alone tonight. Were it any other night, Lix would have rolled her eyes.

She takes her coat from his hands.

***

The first thing she does when she gets back to her office, hands bitten numb from midnight frost, is get out that damn bottle of whiskey. Randall says nothing as she pours out a glass, takes it all at once. He moves from the doorway to her desk and she doesn’t even scold him when he starts to shuffle her papers. (What does it matter now?)

Her throat is scalded and her eyelids feel too heavy. She is suddenly, awfully aware of the mess in this room. The paperwork spilling over the edge, tiny dagger pins plunged into the wall, words and words and words taped across the windows. She wonders if she’s about to throw up. It had all meant so much. Randall is an arm’s length away, but she can feel the graveyard between them. It had all meant so much.

For the second time that hour, the tenth time this day, Lix Storm feels as though she might cry.

“I – I’ll be right back. You – you stay here.”

This time, Randall doesn’t say a single thing.

***

She doesn’t quite know where she’s going. In all honesty, she’s running out of spaces. Mascara stains in the washroom stall, the constriction of lungs in the elevator – Lix wonders if she’s marked every bloody room with her weakness. She’s running out of hiding spots, burial grounds. (She can’t even write a bloody epitaph for the girl. She can’t write a single thing.)

When she passes by the bulletin board, she rips out all of Randall’s tacks.

***

Randall’s office is too clean. (She had left while the papers were still hurricane-spiralled on the floorboards. Randall had let go of her hand and she had left, folded up in the washroom stall, ink trails under her eyes.) She knows this sort of clean, remembers it.

Spain. Her body pressed up against the door. She had left then, he had asked her and she had always left. Spain. A cold doorknob and the sound of papers being folded, the shelf being reorganized. Her back stiff against the wall and the sound of something smashing, of glass sliding out from under the door. (She had held a piece once, cut the skin between her thumb and finger.) The mess had never been there when she came back, that evening, the next morning. The books were there, alphabetical order, the negatives lined up in rows, bed made, floor clean. (It had almost been enough to make her forget she was in a war, that she was a war.) Their apartment had stunk of whiskey, but their apartment had always stunk of whiskey. She had never asked questions, never questioned the missing bottles, the pieces of glass that collected like dust on the ground.

His office doesn’t stink of whiskey, though. That’s her. It’s just her.

She digs the heel of her palm against her eye, steadies herself against his desk. It’s there. Just as it used to be. She’s spent the past weeks fitting around him, holding him steady, now the gulfs in this room, the emptiness of them, are so staggering, she doesn’t know if there’s a space to press herself into anymore. She needs to cry. She needs to lie down.

(His recliner feels of him though, bent head, the slope of his shoulder. His weight is there, stamped into the leather. She squeezes her eyes shut, finds her hand dangling off the end, searching for his. _Shit. Shitshitshit._ )

***

“Lix?”

She’s been here too long. It’s been five minutes, but it’s been too long. Light comes in from the hallway in sharp-edged angles, no glow, only glare, and his silhouette the cut-out in the centre.

She doesn’t say anything. At her side, her fist curls open. (She will not ask him to hold her. She doesn’t need him to. She wants him to. She doesn’t want anything. She wants to be alone.) She feels his weight at her side, the base of his spine running against the bridge of her knee. He takes her hand. Damn him. (Curse him, bless him, love him. She doesn’t trust herself. Not anymore, not since he came back.)

“Randall,” eyes open, hands blind, she reaches up for his collar. The knot of his tie falls apart too easily in her hands. He pulls away, only a fraction. (But Randall is fractions, fractions and decimals and paperclips, lined up in army rows.)

“Lix.”

A warning, maybe. God, she doesn’t care. (How is she supposed to care anymore? What is she supposed to care with?)

“The first time,” she says, a hand on either end of his tie. It’s the red one. (The colour was all over Freddie’s face. Freddie.) “The first time it wasn’t you, he didn’t start with the tie. Started with his trousers, bloody eager. He didn’t – so I told him, I told him to stop.” She pulls her mouth into a laugh, but the sound comes out wrong. She blinks, forces the tears down. “He stopped. That was that.” (The second time, she had let the man, had enjoyed it. The second time it had felt like revenge. The third time, it had hardly mattered.)

She guides his hands to the buttons of her shirt, shrugging off her jacket.

His fingers are nervous, paused, on the second button. She can count the breaths between each unfastening.

They spend a long time like that. Days, months, nineteen years, breathing, his fingers under the fabric of her blouse, sliding it off her arms, hands against her skin. (She remembers when they used to hold cameras. She remembers looking at him through the glass.) She doesn’t look away when he takes her shirt into his hands, folds it neatly and lays it on the floor. She doesn’t look away when she starts on his shirt, her hands faster, harder than his. She looks him in the eye. She wills herself to not turn her head away, wills the tears to stay frozen in her eyes.

She feels as though her pulse is slowing, feels the beat of her heart against the clenching of her lung. She breathes. (His breath, butterfly flutters, is centimetres away from her mouth. They haven’t kissed in nineteen years.)

(Her throat is scalded and burned. He will smudge her lipstick. The tears, if there are tears, will ruin her make up. She peels the shirt from his ribs, fingers on his throat, counts the spaces between his exhale, her inhale. She wants to care.)

She forgets the next step. There’s pattern to it, a method, always a bloody method. She hated it some nights, shouts in the streets, wanting his mouth in the shadow of her jaw. She missed it afterwards. Structure, support, something predictable. She forgets the next step. His hands undo her trousers. She mirrors him. They used to kiss more. They haven’t kissed in nineteen years.

And then there’s nothing. Three breaths, in and out, their trousers folded on the floor, straddling the leather seat, staring into his eyes – defiance, pride, she can’t tell the two apart.

She thinks she’s crying. ( _Shit. Shitshitshit. Fuck. Shit._ )

And his fingers are curling around hers, hands landlocked, she feels weak ( _shitshitshit_ ), she feels needy. She hates herself for all of it. (She wants to set her skin on fire, smoke it out. She’s full of smoke and whiskey, ash and rum, smoke this skin, try a new one, one that doesn’t fit so tight and heavy, a heart that doesn’t weigh her down so much.) She digs her nails into the back of his hand, looks away – ashamed, embarrassed, something.

He doesn’t ask her to look back at him.

She fits herself around his body now. Head turned, face wet. Their hands are fastened together but she bends her shoulder, buries her head in the curve of his neck. He doesn’t comment on the way she shakes. He doesn’t mention the tears.

***

He pushes her down and they lie, falling of the edges, overlaying one another. She twists her arms around him, digs into the ridges of her bones, hooks herself into his skin. (Doesn’t look at him, not yet, not yet.) His hands are still around her waist. She can hear him breathing into the space above her head.

Their clothes are folded on the floor. The room is too clean.

She remembers this pattern; she remembers the steps.

(The last time they were like this, bodies thin and pressed together, breathing, there had been life between the two of them. There had been life.)

(She could have been so beautiful. She had been so beautiful. A few months old, a year, the blink of an eye. She had been so beautiful.)

(She could have played the piano. She could have lived in Paris.)

Lix raises her head. (His fingers are there, wiping the black smears from her cheeks. His fingers are there. His mouth. They haven’t kissed in nineteen years.)

She has been here for hours or days. She has been sleeping for years.

Lix Storm takes his face into her hands.

She kisses his mouth.

Her lipstick smudges


End file.
